An Introduction To 《Language And Species》

Derek Bickerton's《Language & Species》is a book about the original of language in terms of evolutionary view point. Its main subject closely relate to our thoughts about lanuage.For example, where does the language come from? Does it look like a wholly novel thing and has it any antecedents of some kind?If it has some, then,what kind of antecedents?What's the role of the language play in the world?What's the relationship between language and reality?What's the consequences for a species that possesses language?All of the questions provide some clues for the book. This thesis is an introduction to《Language & Species》. The part of the foreword introduce the question of the book's background and Bickerton's main purports. The first chapter introduce why language should be a representational system and how could the system work.The second chapter includes four parts. (1) How could the development of representational system have formed the prelinguistic stage.(2)If the protolanguage exists, what it is? What's the relationship between protolanguage and language?(3)The hypothesis of protolanguage's world (4)How could the protolanguage turn into language?In chapter three,the writer of this thesis would try to give some remark about the book.For a long time, we think the human's existence may be some unthoughtable.The consciousness, behavior, artifacts and the power over the world makes human being look like a super species and without any consistency with other species. We cannot hope that language could solve all the questions about the distinction between humans and other species.However, language is an important angle.《Language and Species》provides a good view about the question. Moreover,it provides a well hypothesis about the original of language.